UK to set social media time limits for kids
◗ According to the UK’s media watchdog, only 38% parents of children with Facebook accounts are aware of the minimum age requirement for setting up a profile
London: The British government is drawing up guidelines to limit the number of hours children spend online on social media sites and apps, authorities announced Sunday.
UK health secretary Matt Hancock said he has ordered the plans to be drawn up and attacked social media giants such as Facebook for not policing their own rules on users’ age limits. “I am, as a father, very worried about the growing evidence of the impact of social media on children’s mental health. Unrestricted use ( of social media) by younger children risks being very damaging to their mental health,” he said.
Dame Sally Davies, the UK’s chief medical officer, has been put in charge of drafting guidance on how much social media use should be deemed healthy. “As a parent you want to be able to say ‘ The rules say you shouldn’t use social media for more than a certain period of time’. This is why we have a chief medical officer: to set a norm in society, make judgments on behalf of society, so that individual schools or individual parents don’t have to decide,” Hancock told the Observer newspaper.
The minister suggested that turning phones off before bed would be a “straightforward way of limiting the damage”.
Davies will also be asked to give advice on minimum age for the use of social media sites. According to the UK’s media watchdog – the Office of Communications ( Ofcom), only 38 per cent parents of children with Facebook accounts are aware of the minimum age requirement for setting up a profile.